Today is the last day of week one of the A to Z blogging challenge and I honestly can’t say if I’m relieved or not. This has been a tough week, as I am not used to blogging every day, but it has been really fulfilling as well. I’ve gotten to read some incredible posts, meet some inspiring bloggers, and put myself out there for the world to see (that was the absolutely most terrifying aspect of the whole thing).
For the last post of the week, I decided to change things up. My theme is Everything I Love about Writing. However, no matter how much you love something, life is not perfect. There will always be aspects that drive you nuts, ones that make you lose your mind. For me and writing, it is grammar.
Here’s the ugly truth. I hate grammar and it’s a mutual thing, grammar hates me right back. During school, having to slog through grammar could reduce me to tears. I loved to write as a child, but until I was about ten or so, it was really hard to read any of my stories because they were basically one long run-on sentence.
Of a necessity, I learned grammar. But I hated it, hated having to curtail my imagination and stories because of grammar. I was like a bird in a cage, futilely battering myself against the bars. There were many tears, meltdowns, and loud arguments with my mother (who was also my teacher and a bit of a grammar cop) about grammar and its place in the world. Still, with much angst and fighting, I slowly mastered grammar and my writing improved.
Today, things have improved. I acknowledge grammar (and editing) as a necessary part of writing. After all, if you love something you have to accept all parts of it. Grammar and I have a neutral relationship, the anger and angst are gone but we will never be best friends. When I write, I ignore the grammar check (I often turn it off entirely). Then, when time for editing rolls around, I sigh and groan a little bit, but I ultimately use grammar to check it over and make my novel a better one.
Still, I maintain that learning grammar for the English language is a job and half. Because America is a melting pot, we have snippets from languages all over the world. I’m glad that I’m a native speaker, because I wouldn’t have mastered it otherwise. I’m including a poem below that shows how crazy it can be at times.
So what do you hate, or love, about grammar?
http://www.icaltefl.com/dearest-creature-in-creation (I dare you to try and read it out loud all the way to the end)
The Seeker Files 
This is the best.. I loved your post until the end. And the link was absolutely fabulous driving me nuts. I love and hate grammar. When that becomes an obstacle to writing, i hate the part. I know some friends, who have the brilliant thoughts, but they dare to put into words, fearing grammar. As long as your post is understandable, I am OK to errors. After all, life is full of trial and errors. I do make sincere efforts to post a grammatical free post, but i fail.. Hope i will achieve that in few days or months. To me, grammar has been the stepping stone to enter this blogging world and i hope that will be my ladder to laurels in the nearing future. Have a nice weekend!
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I agree, you should try to make it so that your post is right, but its more important that you be who you are. Fear of judgement held me back a long time from sharing my writing and that makes me sad. I know realize how much I love writing and how many wonderful people out there who will help me on my journey. And I’m sure that your blog will continue to grow and be a wonderful success!
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Thank you Kat.
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I spent a summer working on grammar with my kids–diagramming sentences even. I think schools have kind of given up on that.
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Sadly, diagramming has been phased out of schools and many schools have stopped teaching cursive as well. Can you imagine how many historical documents will be unreadable in just a few generations if that continues?
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I love good grammar, though it doesn’t come naturally to me. Actually, the “revival” of paying attention to grammar has really helped me to improve. I really love Grammarly. It has helped me to pay more attention to how I write. It has also taught me some of the rules of grammar that I didn’t pick up on back in my youth.
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It’s true, I’ve learned more about grammar as a writer than I ever did as a kid. My argument is that I’m a fantasy writer and sometimes grammar check wants me to be grammatically correct when my characters just don’t speak like that. And spell check hates my made up words, lol. Just a bit of advice, when you make up a word or a name, type it at least twenty times in a row to see if it’ll be a pain or not. Names with accents, big pains. Either that or set it up in your writing program (I use ms word) so you type the simplest version of it and it auto corrects into the one you want. Saves a lot of frustration down the road.
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It’s especially helpful if you can edit your spell check dictionary. It took me a while to figure out you could do that. It’s very helpful.
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I’m not a native speaker but I actually struggle with the lack of extensive vocabulary more than with grammar (although by no means do I have a perfect grammar either). I find English grammar quite logical in its own way, much easier to understand than for example Spanish 🙂
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Picking up words that are not in your native language can be hard at times and English does have a very diverse and growing vocabulary 🙂
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I like correct grammar, I like to read things that have correct grammar. I hate it when I miss a grammar error in my own writing, especially after proof-reading and editing endlessly! But it is a necessary evil, without it the English language, and all others, would fall apart. Well done on keeping up the challenge, good luck with next week 🙂
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That is true, it is very necessary for all languages. I’m glad that you’ve enjoyed my posts. Thanks for stopping by 🙂
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That poem is brutal! Coincidentally, I got my TEFL certificate from ICAL 16 years and taught overseas for many years with it. And yes, I’ve always been glad to be a native speaker.
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That’s awesome. You must’ve had a lot of neat experiences teaching. And that poem is brutal.
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Well, to be honest, I’ve never though whether I love or hate grammar. I’ve alwasy wanted to write my own stories (I started when I was nine), and grammar was a part of it. No grammar, no stories, so I just had to know it as best I could. And that was it 😉
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I’m glad that it was never a struggle for you 🙂 Congrats on writing so long. Some people just have it in their blood 🙂 Thanks for stopping by.
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I like grammar, without it, I can’t write but of course, I also hate it especially when I’m not sure if I am correct of the usage or not. but it is necessary to be friendly with grammar because you need it and it, well, doesn’t really need you but that’s okay because you can make them behave, well, sometimes.
have a lovely day.
my latest a-z post is:
fiction: he
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I’m glad that you like grammar. Maybe someday I will too 🙂 Thanks for stopping by!
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I grew up with an English teacher mother who loved grammar. Now as an adult I appreciate her passion for corrections and think I will adopt your little badge: To Serve and Correct! 🙂 Unfortunately, some of my children believe grammar to be a harmful form of bacteria…
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Hahaha, a form of bacteria 🙂 My poor mother loves grammar and I drive her crazy at times. I see the sense of grammar, I’m just a bit of a free spirit and dislike being told what to do 😉
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The poem is a tongue twister riot!! I liked reading your views on grammar.
https://lonelycanopyblog.wordpress.com/2018/04/06/ghalib-ki-haveli-lost-in-bylanes-of-purani-dilli/
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Thank you for stopping by 🙂
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I love Grammar, though I’m not sure how good I am, as I’m not a native speaker. But as you said, it sometimes makes us feel as if grammar is a hindrance to our creative flow of writing. However, it is essential and required. Your- You’re is a frequent one I get to edit at the time of proof reading 🙂
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And, Kat, (I’m starting a sentence with ‘”and”), check the diagramming for infinitives: “try to” or “try and.” We really cannot “try and” do something. Just one of those little fiddly bits to drive us crazy in editing.
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Thanks for the advice 🙂
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Drives me crazy. I’m sorry I didn’t get a 😄 for you. You know I was not correcting you. I was agreeing: No matter how much we try, we seem to miss a few. This was a great conversation thread. I’ll do a bloggett on the topic. 😉
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Oh no, I didn’t think you were correcting me, I meant it seriously. It really does help to have many eyes look over something, because we all notice different things in writing. I look forward to reading your take on it 🙂
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